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The AI Misinformation Epidemic

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Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#101

Post by uwiiuvvwu »

ExactoKnight wrote: post #88
uwiiuvvwu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

compared to what though ? are we assuming a linear rate of development ? in evolution organisms change gradually with occasional bursts, and the same seems to be true of human tech evolution. There are periods of stagnation with tiny increments or even regress in places, then there are rapid bursts of unpredictable change, often enabled by information from one area reaching another previously unrelated one.

Peter Thiel has made some other interesting observations: - that our language about the ‘developed' vs ‘developing' world is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology. - that government has changed from thinking that progress can be achieved via planning, into thinking that it's more just there to watch random forces & statistics evolve the world. This change in mindset awa…

interesting points

in this podcast http://www.talkhouse.com/comedian-tim-heidecker-talks-with-a... Adam Curtis argues that we no longer subscribe to grand visions and as a result we're floundering as our internet-induced bubbles send us into every more fragmented echo-chambers

We're never going to achieve anything great again...it's the beginning of the heat-death of human progress! I think that the recent idolatry of the individual has weakened our ability to act en-mass. Previous generations were more cohesive.

WRT skepticism of modification of the natural world - it's so stupid. There is no "natural state" of things. Everything is modifying everything else. We probably even got the ideas to modify ourselves and our environment as early humans from other animals (ants & termites - cities, beavers - dams etc).

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#102

Post by backpropaganda »

graycat wrote: post #18
acover wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way he profits is in the expectations of self driving cars. If people expect it in 3 years and it to be 10x better than humans [to quote musk] then there is huge value in any company that can provide it. Tesla has a market cap larger than Ford. Tesla also has been on the edge of bankruptcy every couple years and recently raised $1 billion in capital.

Sounds like a good short selling opportunity.

Not necessarily. Just because that one thread of AI hype won't work out, doesn't mean the whole company won't work out.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#104

Post by jacquesm »

A lot of start-ups are hyping themselves as deep-learning or something close to that in order to make themselves appear 'hot'. Recently I looked at a company that had absolutely nothing to do with deep-learning or even any kind of machine learning whatsoever and that still managed to sprinkle the various buzz-words with great regularity throughout their investor targeted docs.

What I don't get about this behavior is this: It won't work, and in fact is a net negative, so why do it in the first place?

Investing is a trust thing, if you break trust before you even get to talk to your potential investor there is no way you will raise money from them.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#105

Post by FabHK »

iwintermute wrote: post #95
vanderZwan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you also put into words why? Sincere question, not being snarky; I also know the feeling of something feeling off but not knowing how to express it in words (yet).

Not op, but also from economics background - the issue with economics in public perception for me is that is't became modern "religion"/ideology and moved far from proper science. Especially "mainstream" economics theory. So the issue is not that it's getting misinterpreted due to lack of understanding. The issue there is that it's getting unscientific and politicised purposefully.

Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes.

As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement.

But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumptions that might or might not hold, and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the "winners" compensate the "losers", through redistribution.

So, the economic case for free trade more or less includes the case for redistribution and compensation of those negatively affected by it - but that's often conveniently left out by proponents.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#106

Post by somestag »

uwu wrote: post #103

what's with the claustrophobia-inducing thick black border around the page

That's interesting; I didn't even notice it.

But the border doesn't scale with window size, and I tend to keep my windows large on an already large monitor, so the relative effect was small and (subjectively) even pleasant. I can't get too mad at the design choice, but maybe it should scale in some way to window size.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#107

Post by ericd »

graycat wrote: post #57
unityByFreedom wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to time that kind of thing. Not worth it when you risk losing your shirt. You can lose an infinite amount of money shorting, whereas going long you might only lose all of what you put in.

Yup. But it may be that some people with enough information and time to watch the stock and relevant data on it literally second by second could make a killing. And some people might be in a position to influence the time of the turning point and stimulate an avalanche of a fall. Broadly, no way do I believe that many people, not even fleets, especially not individuals, will put up with the charging time of a battery…

The charging time of the electric car is overnight in your garage, while you're asleep. So the vast majority of the time for the vast majority of people, that's not a relevant concern. On road trips, 30 minute breaks every few hours aren't the end of the world for most people.

For self-driving, there's no way that's going to be held back once it's better than a human driver. The demand is going to be incredibly high, and insurance companies will probably charge human drivers more - they tend to be very good about accurately assessing risk and charging accordingly.

Those other car companies tend to be very lacking on the software side of things.

Have you ever driven a Tesla?

Feel free to short it, but I think it's a very bad idea.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#108

Post by make3 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #48

Here is my annoyance with AI Hype: people seeking extra tailwinds pitch their startups as "ML companies" even with the most tangential usage of ML. It drowns out real ML companies. Most people cannot tell the difference. At a hackathon recently, someone pitched their app as an "ML-driven app" though the only ML in there was some 1-line language translation feature they were consuming off Watson REST services for a ta…

hackathons prizes are bullshit, didn't you know

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#109

Post by stult »

jacquesm wrote: post #104

A lot of start-ups are hyping themselves as deep-learning or something close to that in order to make themselves appear 'hot'. Recently I looked at a company that had absolutely nothing to do with deep-learning or even any kind of machine learning whatsoever and that still managed to sprinkle the various buzz-words with great regularity throughout their investor targeted docs. What I don't get about this behavior is…

Sometimes it's just desperation. Sometimes it just actually works. You'd be amazed how much easier it is to pitch buzz word heavy software to non-technical people. Presumably most serious investors aren't that easily fooled, but surely some are. And some are simply cynically acknowledging that a company which exploits the zeitgeist for marketing purposes is more likely to succeed with its non-technical customer base.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#110

Post by TuringNYC »

erkkie wrote: post #77
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty level 1: The only ML in there was some 1-line language translation feature they were consuming off Watson REST services for a tangential feature on their app Difficulty level 2: Self-trained CNN on a custom dataset using TensorFlow and changes to start/end layers on the NN Difficulty level 3: Custom rolled 12 layer CNN trained with with novel hand labeled data. How many people to you think know the differe…

Why should people be able to tell the difference vs the outcome of those products, unless someone (investors?) is specifically just buying into the AI hype itself? (in which case, this is nothing different from when everything was "social")

I'm not saying people should be able to tell the difference, nor am I discounting the value of the final outcome. Just that pitching an app as ML-driven, when it is barely 1% ML-driven is deceptive and mis-informs the public.

Consider taking the side mirror from a Ferrari, putting it on a Ford Escort, and then pitching the Ford Escort as a race-car. The Ford Escort may be a great family car, but it is not a sports car. People who don't know the difference might come to think of it as a sports car, and might even question the wisdom of spending money on a Ferrari.

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